Tips for Tweeting & Networking at a Conference: Speaker’s Edition

Speaking at an upcoming event or conference? Here are our best tips for using Twitter to boost your visibility, engage with attendees, and network with success.

Tip #1: Promote yourself.
About a month before the event, start sending out some tweets like the ones below (you can also schedule these to run at regular intervals using an application like HootSuite or Tweetdeck). In your tweet, be sure to include 1) the hashtag for the event (ours is #s20c), 2) a link to the event homepage or event registration page.

Tip #2: Check the conference hashtag. Want to know what the audience thought of your presentation? When you get offstage, check the conference hashtag stream and/or your personal “mentions.” You’ll probably see some tweets like these:

Tip #3: Send reply tweets.Take two seconds to send a quick reply — for example: “@SellingPowerMag Thanks for the kudos! #s20c” — and you’ve just made a new Twitter friend. Here’s a tweet of thanks from one of our former speakers, Jon Ferrara; he tweeted this to Anneke Seley after she said he was “the real thing:”

Tip #4: Invite people to talk with you in person.
If you see someone tweet a question or kudos, seize the moment to arrange an in person meeting. For example, you can tweet something like: “Thanks @SellingPowerMag for the comment — let’s talk at the break at Booth 12? #s20c”

Tip #5: Make it easy for people to tweet about you.
If you want people to tweet positive things about your presentation, make sure you do the following things.

Prepare some “tweetable moments.” You will set yourself apart as a speaker if you think in sound bites. Like this:

In our experience, the audience loves to hear short, punchy one-liners like these from speakers. Try creating one or two slides with tweetable moments on them. (Read more: The Power of the ‘Tweetable Moment.’)

Another thing the audience loves? Statistics. Be sure to cite your source (people get cranky when speakers throw out numbers without attributing them to sources).

Nimble getting 45000 visitors per month 10% become users- no advertising – hard social work by @jon_ferrara and @nimble team #s20c